'Scaper of the Month - May 2018

íScaper of the Month RoninAuthor: The Grim Reaperís Friend To be honest, I always love it when one of our íScapers of the Month incorporates some humor into their interview. I feel like it adds some personality to the replies you donít get if youíre completely serious. I had fun with Roninís interview for that reason. Ronin has been working with us in the Codex for some time now, consistently supplying us with high-quality C3G Strategy articles, so I was excited to learn more about him.

ProfileWho are you really?
Nate Hutchings. Not much of a reveal unless you happen to know me both here and in real life, and never put two and two together.

How old are you?
Twenty-four, in people years.

What is your occupation?
Software engineerómainly working in software testing.

Whatís another board game/RPG you enjoy and why? Scrabble. Only other board game I play on the regular, unless you count Super Scrabble as a separate thing. I think the main thing I get out of it is complaining about crappy tile draws. I mean, what in Godís name am I supposed to do with ďTRTRTRTĒ?

What other interests do you have besides HeroScape?
I enjoy hiking and Iím pretty big into comicsóparticularly Spider-Man, Thunderbolts, and any sort of Marvel ďdeep cutĒ book.

HeroScape When and how did you get into HeroScape?
My timelineís a little confused at this point, but it was definitely somewhere in the back half of classic íScapeís run, and had to have been after the Marvel set had come out. Thanks to a slightly late arrival (and limited capital, since I was still in my early teens), I never got hold of a lot of the figures from earlier waves.

Nothing too interesting on the ďhowĒ side of things. My brother and I were looking for a new time-sink. Iíd seen íScape in the store and was curious about it, and heíd played it one time at a friendís house, so we gave it a shot. We started with the Marvel master set and branched out from there.

I noticed youíre fairly involved in C3G. What got you started there?
I drifted away from Heroscape when they switched over to the D&D units, and I got into comics in a big way after thatóIíd always been a superhero guy, but I hadnít been as much of a comic reader until around that time. A few years after falling out of the íScape habit, I came back to it and discovered C3G.

C3G had gotten pretty big already at that point, and I was impressed with the scope of the project. I started helping out here and there with testing and some organizational stuff, and I kept getting in deeper until I wound up where I am now.

What is your favorite C3G unit?
That changes now and again, but probably Star-Lord is the one most consistently up at the top. Heís a super fun unit to build wonky armies around. Honorable mentions go to Blink, Shocker, Buffy, Sif and Baron Zemo (Helmut). Those are all units that tend to pop up in my armies more often than they really should, and Iím always loathe to cut them out of whatever army Iím building.

What about a favorite classic íScape unit?
Itís actually been quite a while since I played classic íScape, but Nilfheim and Kee-Mo-Shi were a couple of my go-tos. Iím a sucker for a cool sculpt.

Describe your favorite HeroScape moment.
I had one really close supers match with dok that sticks out in my mind. I caught a few lucky breaks (and a few weird breaksóI lost every initiative except the two where dok controlled the Glyph of Dagmar, as I recall) and the match came down to Star-Lord and Iron Patriot fighting over the Cosmic Cube in the endgame. I lost out by a hair, but it was a really great game.

Is there anything you would change about the game (unit, rule, mechanic, etc.)?
Super, super petty complaint, but Iíd get rid of ďcloneĒ as a species. Thatís always bugged me about Red Skull.

What is your favorite aspect of HeroScape?
I think itís the simplicity and flexibility of the systemóit really lends itself to customs and thatís a big part of whatís kept me around. In a lot of game systems, it wouldnít be feasible to implement crazy, large-scale, high-quality customs projects like you see for Heroscape.

CommunityCan you tell us how youíve gotten to where you are now in the community?
Good old-fashioned skullduggery and the odd assassination plot.

Whatís your favorite experience involving C3G?
In a long-term sense? I love being able to design for the community and the sense of expanding a world that comes with contributing designs to C3G. Iíve never had a personal customs thread and there would probably be more freedom with that, but I really do love working around the design constraints that come with making a design fit neatly into a whole universe of cards.

I particularly like bringing oddities and overlooked characters into the game. I donít think Iíve gotten more offbeat yet than Carmilla Black, but Iíll try to top that before too long.

More short-term, probably the most exciting moment for me was when my Kang design won the public design poll. That was the first design I got to lead and it had taken me a while to get that breakthrough.

Youíve been part of the Codex now since your first C3G Strategy Article, posted in April 2017. Can you tell our readers how you got started with the Codex, and what itís like in the group?
Not too wild a story, reallyógot asked to sign on by The Grim Reaperís Friend (which is the person who sent me this question, so it feels a bit odd to refer to him in the third person) and I agreed to it, for the sake of having a writing project to do on the side. Mainly thatís what I like it foróit gives me some incentive to do a little writing here and there. Sometimes I even manage to meet the deadlines.

Can you tell us the story behind your title?
Yes.

What do you enjoy most about Heroscapers.com?
Of all the internet forums and social sites Iíve been on, it is far and away the friendliest and most reasonable. Plus itís centered around a great game.

Is there any member of Heroscapers.com youíd really like to play against?
Hmm. Might be fun to go up against Lazy Orang in one of the supers tournaments.

Lie Detector

Three truths and a lie

I once missed a day of school because there was a rabid raccoon at the bus stop that I decided not to tango with.

I have accidentally attended a cello recital.

Once, when asked for my name at a party, I accidentally (and incorrectly) replied that I did not have one.

I have had to cut a hike short in order to avoid a close encounter with a mountain lion.

Last Monthís Lie (Soundwarp SG-1)

Iíve never been out of the USA.

I have over a thousand figures waiting around to be used as custom fodder.

I have enough different Star Wars themed shirts that I could wear a difference one each day for two weeks straight.